Landing H&M major win for Northpark mall

The opening last week of H&M clothing store in Ridgeland meant not only a new shopping choice for metro-area clotheshorses but a significant victory for Northpark mall, which the Sweden-based clothing company chose as the place to open its first store in Mississippi.

When one thinks of shopping in the Jackson area, what often first comes to mind, especially these days, are places like Ridgeland's Renaissance at Colony Park or Pearl's The Outlets of Mississippi, open-air shopping centers that are the modern face of retail and that draw scores of shoppers from across Mississippi.

That kind of broad customer base was, and still is, to some extent, the province of traditional enclosed malls like Northpark and south Jackson's Metrocenter. But those malls, Metrocenter in particular, have fallen on hard times in the last decade or so as developers and shoppers turn to the open-air concept in building and patronizing shopping centers.

Metrocenter and Northpark each are dogged, too, by perceptions as being unsafe at night, whether or not those reputations are deserved. But H&M choosing Northpark shows the mall is still a viable entity worth a major retailer's investment, says mall general manager Michael Huesser.

"There isn't a shopping center that wouldn't want to have H&M, and we're no different," he said. "We're ecstatic to have them."

H&M no doubt could have located at The Outlets or Renaissance or Flowood's Dogwood retail centers had the company truly wanted to. Company spokeswoman Nicole Christie wouldn't say specifically if H&M had any discussions with other local shopping centers before picking Northpark but added H&M typically scouts multiple sites when deciding where to open.

She said the mall presented an enticing environment for the store, and shoppers seemed to agree - the line awaiting the store's opening stretched well beyond H&M's front doors hours before those doors opened.

"It really does come down to what's the best business deal, the right location, the right square footage," Christie said. The 24,000-square-foot Northpark store, spread across two floors, is hard to miss, as is what a coup it is for Northpark to land it.

The area's open-air shopping centers built their buzz in large part because they lured a number of popular retailers to open their first Mississippi stores at their developments. In their prime, places like Northpark and Metrocenter probably could boast the same, but opening first-in-the-state stores happens less frequently at those malls these days.

That's why the H&M opening is significant for Northpark. Enclosed malls face competition from open-air developments and online retail alike, and for a company like H&M to believe in Northpark as the place to build its Mississippi customer base shows in turn that the traditional enclosed mall still has a place in 21st century retail.

Huesser says the mall's best selling points now are what they've always been: a climate-controlled environment where "it's always 72 degrees and sunny," shoppers not having to walk to their cars each time they want to go from one store to another, as can be the case at outdoor retail centers, and a central location in a well-traveled corridor of metro Jackson.

And H&M is deep-pocketed enough to not have to rush into any location decisions. The company's year-over-year sales have been on the rise each month this year, and its global store count has grown by several hundred since spring 2013. The Northpark store is the company's 315th in the U.S.

"If we don't have the right location, we'd rather wait," Christie said.

Northpark's issues, real or imagined, won't be solved through one store opening. But if other retailers see that a globally popular clothing store chain can make it work at the mall, they'll want to lure those customers to their stores, too. Retail has a cluster effect, akin to the strings of car dealerships that line the metro area's interstates.

We'll see if H&M transforms Northpark into a magnet for other major retailers, but with the opening, the mall at least has thrown its hat firmly into the ring.